Statistical mechanics of horizontal gene transfer in evolutionary ecology

DOI10.1007/S10955-010-0112-8zbMATH Open1216.82069arXiv1012.2166OpenAlexW2004339973MaRDI QIDQ540556FDOQ540556

Authors: Nigel Goldenfeld, Nicholas J. Y. Chia 

Publication date: 3 June 2011

Published in: Journal of Statistical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The biological world, especially its majority microbial component, is strongly interacting and may be dominated by collective effects. In this review, we provide a brief introduction for statistical physicists of the way in which living cells communicate genetically through transferred genes, as well as the ways in which they can reorganize their genomes in response to environmental pressure. We discuss how genome evolution can be thought of as related to the physical phenomenon of annealing, and describe the sense in which genomes can be said to exhibit an analogue of information entropy. As a direct application of these ideas, we analyze the variation with ocean depth of transposons in marine microbial genomes, predicting trends that are consistent with recent observations using metagenomic surveys.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2166

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zbMATH Keywords

evolutionmobile genetic elementshorizontal gene transfermetagenomics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Genetics and epigenetics (92D10) Population dynamics (general) (92D25) Applications of statistical mechanics to specific types of physical systems (82D99)

Cites Work

• Synchronization of Pulse-Coupled Biological Oscillators
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Cited In (3)

• Current views of evolution: on the role of horizontal gene transfer
• Statistical mechanics ideas and techniques applied to selected problems in ecology
• Title not available (Why is that?)

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